The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS)
Colorado Jobs With Justice is proud to organize the AROS campaign alongside the Colorado Education Association and many other partners who are ready to take bold action for public education in Colorado. Public Education is under attack, and we're fighting back! We're ready to take on school reformers and education privatizers with the might of the working class. As students, teachers, parents, and workers, we know that education creates opportunity and builds power for our communities, and we're ready to stand against the 1%'s agenda to turn our kids' futures into profits on their balance sheets.
This campaign's guiding platform is simple, but revolutionary:
- We are parents and caregivers, students and community members. We are educators and school staff.
- Public Schools are Public Institutions
- Our Voices Matter
- Strong Public Schools create Strong Communities
- Assessments should be used to improve instruction
- Quality teaching must be delivered by committed, respected, and supported educators
- Schools must be welcoming and respectful places for all
- Our Schools must be fully funded for success and equity
Our Demands are loud and clear:
- Full funding and support for neighborhood-based community schools: don't close or privatize them.
- Schools can play an instrumental role in supporting and nurturing our students, but only when they're adequately and fairly funded.
- Rather than closing schools or turning them over to private, unaccountable managers, we should work to support and build up our schools as strong public institutions in the heart of each and every community.
- We need schools that provide wraparound supports and services for students and their families and act as anchors for their communities.
- Public education must include an engaging, robust, and well-rounded curriculum that includes the arts, sports, and other creative activities that address the diverse needs of our children and prepare them for college, career and active citizenship.
- More teaching, less testing
- The rise of high-stakes standardized testing has pitted schools against each other, narrowed the curriculum, and reduced teaching and learning to a bubble test.
- Test scores are an obsolete measure of student growth and more accurately reflect students’ out-of-school circumstances rather than the impact of schools and teachers.
- We should not hold school funding or teachers’ jobs hostage over a single score.
- Positive discipline policies and an end to zero tolerance
- Harsh school discipline policies disproportionately impact students of color and students with disabilities.
- They increase the likelihood that a student will drop out or become involved in the juvenile justice system, and thus contribute to persistent achievement gaps for these students.
- Alternative discipline policies allow students to learn from their mistakes without excluding them from the classroom, and they provide a safer and more supportive school climate.
- Quality, affordable education from early childhood through college, including for undocumented students
- The success of our nation's public schools rests on creating a pipeline of quality resources and opportunities from a child's earliest years through higher education.
- This pipeline starts with quality resources and opportunities in a child’s earliest years to ensure their healthy development and prepare them for kindergarten.
- Accessible, affordable and high quality postsecondary education is necessary to meet workforce needs and ensure a steady flow of civic-minded, educated community leaders.
- We must also ensure a path to educational opportunity for undocumented students.
- A living wage that lifts people out of poverty
- While public schools can be a stairway out of poverty, equally important is a living wage that ensures more hardworking families have the time and resources to dedicate to their children.
- As America’s inequality gap grows, we must do more to support children and families both inside and outside the classroom.
- Everyone who works hard to care, support, and educate our children deserves a fair wage.
JOIN US by visiting www.reclaimourschools.org/take-action and signing the AROS pledge.
Transit that Works for the Working Class
The transportation industry in Colorado is undergoing significant expansion and change. From new light-rail lines opening, discussion of high-speed rail along the front range, and recent passage of a transportation automation bill in the legislature, transit will have a massive impact on our state's citizens and the economy in the coming years. As the changes develop, we must ensure that the public users of transit and the workers behind the scenes have a voice in the decisions that impact their communities and jobs. That is why we look to combine the necessity of affordable transit for riders with the insurance of good jobs for workers in transit.
From the start, we seek to ensure that all new RTD facilities and light-rail routes are built in a responsible manner. We will work to ensure that contractors awarded bids to construct new transit facilities are respectful of their workers and the community. We will push for local hiring requirements, so that Colorado workers are building our infrastructure. We will also advocate for greater diversity in the construction industry, with a focus on women and people of color, two groups underrepresented in the building and construction trades. We want to ensure that new develop uses skilled labor from certified, union apprenticeship programs. This will ensure that the quality of our transportation system is of the highest degree and protects taxpayer money from being wasted on bad contractors.
A successful transit system is one in which the public has full use and access. If the folks who need to catch a bus or hop on the light-rail for work, to run errands, get to the doctor, or to catch a ball game cannot, then our transit system is a failure. We must ensure public transit stays affordable to the public who need it most. RTD must put into practice income-based passes for riders. Transit that is affordable and serviceable only for the wealthy and tourists is unacceptable. We will continue to push for affordable public transit. With that in mind, we must do more to maintain and expand bus routes. Bus routes are a vital part to a thriving city. We should be working to expand bus services, not cut routes. Expanding bus routes creates more good, middle class bus driver jobs.
We must also keep an eye to the future in our current work. During the 2017 legislative session, the Colorado legislature passed a bill to allow for the unrestricted and unregulated automation of transportation in our state. The bill did not address safety concerns regarding driver-less cars, nor was their any mention of the potential 62,270 directly impacted jobs that could be lost as a result of automation. RTD bus drivers and light-rail conductors are now threatened by an uncertain future. We must ensure the safety of riders is accounted for as automation increases, and also fight to make sure workers impacted by automation receive the training and financial support to transition into good paying jobs. If 62,000 Colorado workers lose their jobs without any transition plan, this would be a massive blow to our communities and state economy. Workers need to have input into their future, and we will fight to ensure this happens.
From the planning and construction of new transportation services all the way to the future of the transportation industry, riders and workers must be integrated into the process. Without them, there is no transit system. Good jobs equals good transit. Affordable transit equals good transit. Colorado Jobs With Justice will seek to unite the two constituencies to ensure we have a world class transportation system for all our citizens
The transportation industry in Colorado is undergoing significant expansion and change. From new light-rail lines opening, discussion of high-speed rail along the front range, and recent passage of a transportation automation bill in the legislature, transit will have a massive impact on our state's citizens and the economy in the coming years. As the changes develop, we must ensure that the public users of transit and the workers behind the scenes have a voice in the decisions that impact their communities and jobs. That is why we look to combine the necessity of affordable transit for riders with the insurance of good jobs for workers in transit.
From the start, we seek to ensure that all new RTD facilities and light-rail routes are built in a responsible manner. We will work to ensure that contractors awarded bids to construct new transit facilities are respectful of their workers and the community. We will push for local hiring requirements, so that Colorado workers are building our infrastructure. We will also advocate for greater diversity in the construction industry, with a focus on women and people of color, two groups underrepresented in the building and construction trades. We want to ensure that new develop uses skilled labor from certified, union apprenticeship programs. This will ensure that the quality of our transportation system is of the highest degree and protects taxpayer money from being wasted on bad contractors.
A successful transit system is one in which the public has full use and access. If the folks who need to catch a bus or hop on the light-rail for work, to run errands, get to the doctor, or to catch a ball game cannot, then our transit system is a failure. We must ensure public transit stays affordable to the public who need it most. RTD must put into practice income-based passes for riders. Transit that is affordable and serviceable only for the wealthy and tourists is unacceptable. We will continue to push for affordable public transit. With that in mind, we must do more to maintain and expand bus routes. Bus routes are a vital part to a thriving city. We should be working to expand bus services, not cut routes. Expanding bus routes creates more good, middle class bus driver jobs.
We must also keep an eye to the future in our current work. During the 2017 legislative session, the Colorado legislature passed a bill to allow for the unrestricted and unregulated automation of transportation in our state. The bill did not address safety concerns regarding driver-less cars, nor was their any mention of the potential 62,270 directly impacted jobs that could be lost as a result of automation. RTD bus drivers and light-rail conductors are now threatened by an uncertain future. We must ensure the safety of riders is accounted for as automation increases, and also fight to make sure workers impacted by automation receive the training and financial support to transition into good paying jobs. If 62,000 Colorado workers lose their jobs without any transition plan, this would be a massive blow to our communities and state economy. Workers need to have input into their future, and we will fight to ensure this happens.
From the planning and construction of new transportation services all the way to the future of the transportation industry, riders and workers must be integrated into the process. Without them, there is no transit system. Good jobs equals good transit. Affordable transit equals good transit. Colorado Jobs With Justice will seek to unite the two constituencies to ensure we have a world class transportation system for all our citizens
